The film is unsubtle in its disapproval of women who wear the veil: the characters crack jokes about burqinis and Carrie -- in the film's lowest point -- openly mocks a local woman for eating French fries under her veil.

Mr. Terzian believes that Roosevelt's "unsubtle slighting" of Churchill at the Tehran and Yalta conferences, and the president's closer attention to Stalin, have been misinterpreted: "Roosevelt made the mistake of suggesting to the British that his personal charm might be persuasive with Stalin when, of course, he believed no such thing."

Third, it's about the friction between a classically formal playwright (Elomire, an unsubtle anagram for Moliere) and Valere, an exponent of dumbed-down comedy, and their rivalry for the patronage of a very rich French Princess -- not much to get excited about there, apparently.